Web Description:
The object belongs to a group of six-sided bottles and pitchers with Christian symbols that are readily distinguishable by their height, color, and subject matter from the vessels with Christian and Jewish symbols probably made in Jerusalem. While all but one of the Christian glasses of "Jerusalem" type are decorated with crosses or crosses in aediculae alternating with large concentric lozenges, the taller vessels have crosses, palm fronds, lattices, and stylite saints. The last motif, unmistakable in some examples, suggests strongly that these vessels were made in Syria, where Saint Simeon Stylites and his imitators attracted pilgrims from all parts of Christendom. Saint Simeon was expelled from his monastery for excessive austerity and spent the rest of his life perched on a series of pillars (Greek stylos: hence stylites, one who stands on a pillar). According to his biographer, Theodoretus, pilgrims visited Simeon from as far afield as Britain, and after his death they frequented the shrine constructed around his pillar, at Qala'at Semaan. Vessels decorated with stylites, therefore, may have been made as early as the mid-fifth century, when Saint Simeon was already attracting attention; presumably, production ceased not later than the Arab invasion of Syria in 641. Thus, they are contemporary with the "Jerusalem" bottles and pitchers, and they probably had a similar function: as pilgrims' souvenirs, perhaps containing oil or water.